


starting over takes time that i do not have

by noxes



Series: on the way up [2]
Category: The Property of Hate
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explanations, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Foster Care, Found Family, Gen, Hugs, I AM SORRY ABOUT THE LATENESS OF THIS, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nonbinary Character, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Post-Ending AU, Sleepovers, Speculation, Unconventional Families, also subtle, hero's an nb girl, super subtle but its there, thats a thing in this one--they decided to be a human after the end, this is the group hug fic, unfair depictions of the foster care system, yes i am aware that assok probably used to be an elephant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23231473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxes/pseuds/noxes
Summary: Things are different, in the new house. There's a lot that needs to be explained on both ends.Still, though, you can't help but wonder if they missed you as much as you missed them.
Relationships: Hero & Everyone, RGB & Hero (TPoH), herofam
Series: on the way up [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1670275
Comments: 46
Kudos: 76





	starting over takes time that i do not have

**Author's Note:**

> OH MY GODS i am SO SORRY with the massive delay on this fic! i have no excuse other than that i started at a new school this year and adhd a biiiitch.
> 
> but anyway, here's the long-awaited sequel!

_She doesn’t want to see you between the time when you get home from school and dinnertime. You are supposed to do your homework in your room, entertain yourself in your room, do everything in (NOT_ _your room)_ _the place where you sleep. Your containment box. Your terrarium._

_You’d prefer a terrarium, you think sourly as you sit on your bed. You haven’t unpacked your suitcase yet. Not that it matters, since she never notices (and if she has, she doesn’t say), but it’s the only way you can fight back. Or at least_ feel _like you’re fighting back._

_Are all parents like this? Were your parents like this? Your life is a fog and you can’t remember your own name, but the fragments you’re able to hold on to don’t feel like this. You can never recall the uncontrollable urge to rail against the implacable Rules, beat your fists and scream at them._

_Maybe the reason that you feel that way now is because you know it’s wrong. The thought, oddly enough, gives you comfort._

~ ~ ~

The only time you can recall RGB permitting you to touch him for this long before was in front of The Door. That’s also the only time you can recall him holding you with this level of intensity, nothing like the casual, don’t-mind-me-just-invading-your-personal-space-no-biggie touches that you shared before. 

That was towards the end, mostly. Later on, once he’d gotten past his whole No Touchy Rule.

_Mental note: show RGB_ The Emperor’s New Groove.

He’s holding you so tight and it’s not the same as before, gestures that he liked to pretend meant nothing—a hand passing over your head, perhaps, or a pat on the shoulder. _Easy come, easy go._ Be a stranger when they leave and it’ll hurt you both less.

Bull and shit. Those few little touches turned into more and more and more and even though he’s a coward he’s got a heart that’s too big for his line of work—and that was RGB’s undoing. And yours, in a way, but what could you have known? You were six. You never saw how much he loved you until right at the end.

What should have been the end.

He picks you up like you’re a newborn and half-cradles you, arms tight around you. It feels nice, really nice, but different. Strange. 

Did your old parents ever hold you like this?

~ ~ ~

_The social worker is tired. Seen too many people today, wants to go home. Christmas is almost here and the streets and shopping malls are choked with people. Rush, rush, rush._

_The worker offers cursory glances at best. Yawning and checking their watch every five seconds, they step from room to room, scan the contents of the fridge in a nanosecond, cast a quick look around your room. Their eyes dab Wite-Out over the still-packed suitcase, the sparse decorations, the lock on the outside of the door._

_They don’t want to see it._

_The worker asks you a few questions. Your vision is blurring their face away. You answer in robotic, one-word responses. They nod, yawn, scribble scribble on the clipboard. Smell like pencil shavings and coffee. No face at all._

_You want out of here, but they’re saying that everything is In Order And Fine, Have A Good Rest Of Your Day And Happy Holidays Ma’am._

_The door shuts behind them with a_ click _that shakes the entire house. Plaster falls from the ceiling and cracks spread up the walls; the windows shatter into a hundred thousand pieces._

_“Well,” Mrs. Rowling Your Foster Mother says, turning to you with a smile that makes the thick foundation on her cheeks crack like the paint on a china doll, “that’s that.”_

~ ~ ~

The inside of The House of Paint: Living World Edition is every bit as weird as the outside. The walls are wood/plaster/wood/brick, the carpet is blue/beige/green(!!!!)/brown, the pictures blink and turn their heads. You could stare at it all forever.

Dial’s making grabby hands at you. You wonder if he wants something from you, but RGB makes a disgruntled noise and squeezes you tighter. “Hands off, you scoundrel; I haven’t seen her in half a year.”

“Neither have the rest of us, y’old miser!” Dial snips right back. The two of them jump into the familiar steps of the ongoing fight between them that you’re pretty sure is going to last forever, though through time and reconciling the worst of the wounds they’ve inflicted on each other, the angry dance has softened into gentle, good-natured bickering.

You’re glad. 

Tailor sneaks up behind RGB, waiting for their opportunity, and, when he takes one hand off you to make a wide, expansive gesture (as he’s prone to do, and a trait that he shares with Dial) they seize you from him. You giggle helplessly, arms and legs flailing until they get you situated on their hip. Both of the cousins object, loudly, and the entire group is soon in an uproar that ends with Tinker calmly lifting you out of the melee and addressing the rest with a sigh and a quiet “suppose we all sit down and talk things out, hmm?”

They all agree that sounds like a good idea.

(Eventually, you just end up getting passed around from person to person, because they apparently all want to hug you.)

~ ~ ~

That first night in the House is strange for a lot of reasons. 

“I used to have dreams about this,” you say idly, during a rare calm moment when all of you are quiet and contemplative, digesting information. You pick at the pretty threaded flowers stitched onto Melody’s shirt. (If you pull on the thread too hard, will the flower unravel?) “About you guys, and everything that happened. I kept waking up and not knowing where I was for a second.”

“Yeah, we were all pretty messed up for a while, there,” Dial sighs, dragging a hand through his almost obnoxiously red hair. If he didn’t wear it long and curly like RGB does, you’d never be able to pin them for cousins. Dial’s skin is darker and he’s _covered_ in freckles wherever his skin is visible. RGB, meanwhile, is shorter and stockier, and his face is much more angular. 

Plus, he keeps rolling his eyes at Dial’s awful posture. His cousin is hunched forward with his elbows resting loosely on his knees so he can look you in the eye better from where you’re sitting on Melody’s lap. 

“How long were you here for?” you ask, looking around at all of them curiously. “I mean before I got here.” The somber mood lifts slightly and Dial sits up a bit.

“Oh, we—”

“We were here for almost four months,” RGB interrupts him, giving him a smug look in response to the affronted expression sitting comically on Dial’s face. He shifts and crosses his legs at the ankle, surveying you carefully. 

After the initial burst of unbridled emotion unlocked by your sudden and inexplicable presence on his doorstep, RGB quickly recovered his usual stiff demeanor (albeit softened quite a bit by emotion that he can’t quite suppress), retreating behind his mental walls and studying you from the cracks in between them. Or maybe he’s just looking at you. You can’t tell. 

“How?” Your voice sounds raspier than you’d like. Julienne reaches over and puts her hand on your knee, rubbing little circles into it with her thumb. You stare at it. Her skin is a rich, dark-chocolate brown and the pads of her fingers are a little rough. She has callouses on her palm and the back of her hand smells like vanilla bean lotion.

She’s wearing grey sweatpants and a black tank top with gold-thread floral designs stitched into it. (You wonder if she decided to match Melody on purpose or whether the floral patterns are just a coincidence; regardless, it makes your heart feel toasty.) You imagine her on the stage, wearing a ballerina leotard with a flowy skirt, maybe, and it hurts how easy it is to imagine her dancing in candy-floss pink. 

“How did we get here, you mean?” she says, still stroking your knee. It feels nice. You nod. Julienne looks at RGB. 

“Why do _I_ have to answer?” he almost whines. Tailor swats him. 

“Because you’re the one who set the operation up with your girlfriend, you fop. Now tell her.”

RGB splutters about how Madras is not his “girlfriend,” even though she totally is. You consider telling all of them about the whole you-being-kind-of-a-girl-but-not-really thing, but decide that now’s not the best time. Maybe you’ll tell a few of them later. Like Tailor and RGB. 

“Oh, _fine,”_ he grouchily concedes. “I’m not going over the whole process, because I don’t completely understand it myself, but I _do_ know that we had to get help from many of the people we ran into on your journey, including Time.”

“How’s he doing?” you query. 

“Annoyingly cryptic as ever, though he did say to give you his well-wishes.”

You smile. Then you think about everything for a second. When you’re done thinking, you have another question. 

“Why’d you come here? Have you really been here the whole time?”

“Again with the ‘why’s,” RGB sighs theatrically. 

“You _just asked_ a ‘why’ question,” you remind him. 

“...oh, damnation, I _did,_ didn’t I.”

“If you’re just going to stall forever like a coward, _I’ll_ answer,” Tailor butts in. RGB nails them with a poisonous glare, which they wave away. 

“We came here for several reasons, actually,” they say, pushing their curly grey hair out of their face. “Some of us elected to stay behind, but the rest crossed over the border and ended up in…where was it?”

“Moscow,” Dial pipes up.

Your eyes nearly pop out of your head. “Moscow…like, in _Russia?”_

“Yeah,” TOby grunts. “Getting back to England was a real bastard.” Tinker pokes him in the ribs. “Don’t poke me, jackass, it _was._ Kid’s in third grade now, that’s old enough for me to be able to swear.”  
  


“No, it’s _not,”_ Tailor half-yells at him. Tinker rolls his eyes so hard you can almost hear it as the two of them bicker loudly over whether you’re old enough to hear Grown-Up Words. 

You are. You hear them all the time; the big kids in the schoolyard, practicing at being adults, and Mrs. Rowling, too deep into a bottle of red wine to see you as anything other than her next paycheck from the child protection officer…

You give your head a little shake. You keep going back, your mind jumping to different points in time even though the important stuff is happening here and now. You’re forgetting where you are or when or who. 

You need to focus long enough to figure out what’s going on so you can make a plan. Pain usually works, so you pinch the back of your hand, hard, and dig your ragged, bitten nails into the skin. 

It helps and hurts, but it helps more. You feel more _here,_ more like you, whoever you are.

You blink. You’re sitting in Julienne’s lap, now. _When did you move?_ You didn’t see or feel it. Dial’s looking at you funny again. You hide your hand as discreetly as you can. You’ll have to be more careful now; these guys will care about you hurting yourself more than Mrs. Rowling did. 

RGB is also looking at you oddly, but it’s a different kind of odd, almost longing. Wistful. Julienne catches his eye and pouts at him, and he scoffs and looks away like he’s embarrassed the two of you caught him looking, his fingers curling and his ears turning red.

“Well, now I just feel like a bad person,” she mutters. Tailor and TOby are still fighting. Tinker moves to sit in between them so they don’t start biting and scratching each other.

Julienne’s arms are strong and wiry, not as gentle or soft as Melody’s, but more protective, forming a cage around you. You like it. You like being touched in a way that isn’t painful. It’s been a while, since you don’t have any friends at school, and your foster home is Less Than Ideal.

Was. Was less than ideal. Because you don’t have to go back. Keep it in mind, you’re not going back there, do not panic, breathe/be strong/hold on.

_“Anyway,”_ RGB interrupts the fighting, which he’s been watching with a smugly amused expression. “Yes, we first popped up in Moscow, and it took us a while to get here, and even longer to find a place that would serve as a…almost a spill-over from your world to ours. A tear, of sorts.”  
  
  
“Is that why the house looks all weird?” you say, gazing at a framed picture. You’re dead sure it was a cow just a second ago, but now it looks like one of those things that psychologists give people, with the ink splattered on the page. Roar-shack tests, you think.

“Yes, the spillover caused the house to change to suit our needs. It’s not dangerous in any way; you needn’t be worried of that. It just might be a bit hard for you to get used to, at first.”

You think of Mrs. Rowling’s house, sterile and modern, everything always clean without a speck of dust anywhere to be found and a disapproving look around every corner, and the smell of lemon dust cleaner and rubbing alcohol in the air, like a doctor’s office. Then you look at this room, brightly lit and warm, filled with ugly armchairs and couches with ridiculous patterns, the rug in front of the fireplace subtly shifting tones into a shade of pastel blue, and people, who you’re sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that you love, sitting in a circle and looking at you with concern and compassion and maybe a little bit of love back. (Oh, please let them love you, even if it’s just a fraction as much as you love them.)

You smile, feel your eyes crinkle. “I think I’ll manage okay.” RGB grins back at you, and there’s something of the smile that used to spread across his telly screen and drip green on his front in it.

Several people laugh, and Melody leans over to tousle your hair affectionately. When you look over at her, she signs, _Tailor didn’t really answer your question._ (Tailor makes a face and mumbles “Sorry.”) _We mostly came here because of_ you, _Hero._

You stare at her. “Me?”

  
  
“What about you? I can’t see what she’s saying,” TOby mutters.

_We wanted to make sure you were okay. We missed you._ Her eyes are soft and honey-brown, and full of warmth and tenderness.

You open your mouth, close it, and look at the floor, vision suddenly blurring.

_We missed you._ The thought is staggering, overwhelming. They missed you. Your family missed you.

“...you did?” It comes out smaller than you would like. You stare resolutely at the blurry, shaky floor. Silence reigns in the room for a few seconds, until Julienne breaks it.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing you tight. You sniff and turn your head to look at her. She smiles at you, a beautiful white smile that shines in her dark face. “Of course we missed you! Why wouldn’t we?”

You look around at all of them. They’re all looking at you with this soft expression that makes your heart flutter and open up like a flower opening to the sun. More tears well up and drip down your face. You look at RGB almost hesitantly, afraid of what you’ll see there.

He looks back at you, and you can see it in his eyes: he missed you. You feel it like a punch in the throat, remembering what Dial said about him in the moments after you left him and walked through Hate’s white door: _“He looked like somebody killed his kid.”_ You swallow and duck your head under the weight of his love for you.

“I missed you guys, too,” you say, voice tiny. “A lot.”

There’s a very pregnant pause this time. Dial’s the first to stand up and walk over to you, as Melody scoots closer. Assok bounces up from where they’ve been watching quietly and scampers over to you. Julienne shifts off the couch so she doesn’t have to stop hugging you, but she relinquishes her grip a little bit, just enough to let Dial wind his long, lanky arms around you. Assok worms under him and hugs you so tight you forget how to breathe, but it’s all right. TOby’s calloused hand slips behind your neck and squeezes gently; Melody’s hands cup your cheeks and her thumbs smooth your tears away. Tailor kisses your temple, softly, like a butterfly wing; Tinker reaches through the crowd and grips your hand, firmly, almost fiercely.

For a second, you think, _there’s no way. He doesn’t like being touched._ But then a gloved hand lands on the crown of your head and a hidden bit of tension leaks out of your body like a sigh.

“Of course we missed you,” RGB whispers in your ear, mirroring Julienne’s words. You hear the hidden _“I missed you,”_ in it. More tears tremble, on the cusp of falling; they spill over and roll down your face when he presses his lips against your cheek, a quick brush before it’s gone.

You sob once, so hard it shakes your whole body, and with that, you start to cry, tears unspooling and fear of being forgotten evaporating. _They missed you. They missed you. They want you._

Mrs. Rowling never wanted you. She wanted the money and she wanted the attention and the popularity that came from being a foster mother, a Good Samaritan, but you were too complicated, too messy, too _you_ for her to handle, so if she couldn’t put you in a box or tell you off for stepping outside the box, she didn’t handle you at all.

It hurt, to be Unwanted.

This hurts too, but in a good way; like your chest is filling up with love and joy and fear and excitement and nervous anticipation, like your ribs will crack and your spine will buckle under the weight of it. It’s unfathomable, and unbearable. It hurts like nothing you’ve ever felt.

You never want it to stop.

~ ~ ~

_Your eyes sting. Your arm is aching._

_You just wanted some food. A snack. You were so hungry. Are. Are so hungry. She doesn’t let you eat anything until dinner, and you ran out of lunch money on your card a week ago. She said she’d put more on. She hasn’t._

_You just. You just wanted some Cheerios. Just a little bowl. Something. Anything._

_Your lip trembles. She grabbed your arm and hauled you upstairs, ranting the whole time about The Rules, The Rules, The Rules, how they must never be broken. Rules Most Sacred._

_You’ll have a purple bruise around your upper arm tomorrow. It’s the middle of the month—the social workers have come and gone and won’t be back for two more weeks, and the mark will have faded by then._

_You start to cry, quietly, in hitching, snuffling sobs._

_You just wanted some Cheerios._

~ ~ ~

Of course, it _does_ stop, eventually. You cry yourself out and finally sit, exhausted and squeezed-out, feeling like a deflated balloon. You sniff and wipe your eyes and nose on your wrist.

“Sorry I cried on all of you so much,” you offer. Your voice still sounds bubbly and wet from the snot in your nose. Eesh, you’re stuffy.

“Well,” TOby’s voice, which you’re beginning to think sounds perpetually unimpressed, “to be fair, this lot cried on you a lot, too.”

“Like you care about ‘fair,’” Julienne sniffs, and yeah, she sounds congested too, “and I am much too dignified to cry.”

“I’m not,” Dial’s voice pipes up brightly, sounding like sunshine after a rainstorm. “I cried like a baby. Anyone else cry like a baby?”

Melody, Tinker, Tailor, and Assok all put their hands up, Dial pushes Assok’s hand down again. “No, not you; you get a pass because you _are_ a baby.”

Assok turns around to give you a pleading look and you supply them with a loud, “Am _not!”_  
  


They beam, then turn around and mimic it: “Am _not!”_

“Oh God help us,” TOby groans. “They’re working together now.”

“We always were,” you say, wiping your nose again and smiling a watery smile. They all back off you a little bit, sitting in a circle again, though much tighter-knit and sitting on the floor.

“I can attest to that,” RGB’s low voice comes from behind you, as he crosses into your field of vision, dropping gracefully into a cross-legged pose and casually leaning over to affectionately chuck you under the chin. You squinch your face up in surprise and joy. “They were both taking the wind out of my sails as long as they were together.”

“I’m sorry,” you say with as much sincerity as you can muster. When he looks over at you, startled, you flutter your eyelashes innocently at him and say, “It’s just so _easy…”_

RGB scowls at you and the living room explodes with laughter. TOby actually smiles and holds out his hand for a fist-bump.

The laughing, playful jabs at RGB and tousling of your hair doesn’t die down until Tailor pipes up with, “I don’t know about the rest of you fine folk, but _I_ am in no mood to sleep in my own bed right now. I vote sleepover in here.”

“I second that,” Dial half-shouts in his excitement, nearly whacking Tinker in the face as his hand shoots into the air. More affirmations make their way around the misshapen circle.

“Yes!”

“Ye-as!”

_Yes, I would like that._

“...yeah, okay.”

“That would be satisfactory.”

“Now hold on,” RGB starts to object, but he gets buried under a wave of protests from all of you.

“All right,” he yells, relenting. “All _right,_ fine. I suppose we’re all used to sleeping on the ground by this point anyway.”

You practically vibrate with excitement. You’ve never been to a sleepover before.

~ ~ ~ 

_She never lets you leave the house, never lets anyone come over if they say they’re for you. She pretends that you’re “too busy,” and sends them away with a smile. When a big group of rowdy boys shows up looking for her son, she calls him downstairs from where he’s doing his math homework and tells him to be back by 6._

_He has two tests, three quizzes, and a metric ton of late work to make up. You have one quiz that you’ve studied for, and two pages of science._

_You love science._

_You watch the boys tumble down the street from your window. They laugh and talk and shove each other._

_You might as well study for the quiz again. It’s not like there’s anything else to do._

~ ~ ~

_“Never?”_

You giggle and shake your head. “Nope.”

“Never _ever?”_ Dial says, boggling at you from where he’s sprawled out over an armchair in an unlikely position. _How can that possibly be comfortable for him?_

“Ever never ever never?” Assok pipes up, eyes wide. They’re laying on their stomach on the ground, chin resting on their folded arms. The gang dragged out a bunch of sleeping bags and mattresses and blankets and pillows and spread them out over the living room floor, with the couches and chairs in a ring around them, so the whole room is essentially a big bed.

“Hey,” you object, making the stuffed elephant in your lap point at them accusingly. “You’ve never had a sleepover either.”

They stick their tongue out at you. For somebody who used to be a different species, they’re quite good at figuring out how to act like a human. Following the rules of Kid Etiquette, you stick your tongue back out at them. A challenge issued by means of tongue-stick-out must always be met, no exceptions.

You like kid rules much better than The Rules.

You’re in your pajamas now. You packed them in the bag you took to run away from home. You also have your toothbrush and toothpaste, and a few changes of clothes, and a box of bandaids with frogs and snails on them, and a few books, and a couple dollars in change.

TOby throws a pillow at you. It nails you right in the face. “Pipe down. I’m trying to sleep.”

“It’s too early for that!” Julienne squawks, looking up from where she’s painting Tinker’s nails a gorgeous shade of green. You toss the pillow back at him (it falls limply on the ground and you curse your wimpy throwing arm) and shuffle over hopefully, asking if you can get your toenails done in that color, too. Julienne smiles a wide, beaming smile that flashes brilliant white in her dark face and says of course you may.

“‘Heroes wear green,’ eh?” RGB says, smiling crookedly at you from where he’s sitting with his back against the armchair that Dial seems to be having a love affair with. You nod and beam at him. Your heart swells up. You’re _so happy_ to see him.

He’s doing that weird thing with his hands again, curling his fingers nervously. You wonder if it’s a tic that you simply hadn’t noticed before. He catches you looking and relaxes his hands, insofar as it can be called “relaxing,” given that it looks very forced. 

Definitely not voluntary, then.

Julienne tickles your feet to get your attention so she can start painting your nails and you squeal. TOby sits up, looking murderous, but before he can start in on you Melody bops him over the head with a pillow. He immediately snatches up the pillow he was sleeping on and whacks her right in the kisser with it, and then Tailor tackles him from behind and _shoves a pillow over his face,_ and Dial jumps off the chair, looking cheerfully devious, and pretty soon there’s an all-out pillow war raging on the other side of the living room. You squirm, eager to join, and Tinker sighs at the mess of feathers and pillow stuffing.

_“Really,”_ RGB sighs right along with him, acting all refined and stuff, until a pillow hits him right in the snoot (you’re pretty sure that was on purpose, judging by Dial’s gleeful expression) and he bounces to his feet with a cry of, “oh, that’s _it!”_

Julienne watches your nails for a few more seconds, touching the tip of a calloused finger to the drying polish, then pronounces you battle-ready and hands you a pillow, taking up one herself.

“I must come to my wife’s aid,” she says, standing tall and dignified, though it’s broken by the smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Will you join me, brave Hero?”

You grin, showing off your missing tooth. “With pleasure, Madam Julienne.”

~ ~ ~

You’re so tired you fall asleep right there on the floor. Most of the pillows are deflated bags by this point, but more materialized on the couch and chairs when you weren’t looking. The House is helping you out.

You drift in and out of a gentle doze, listening to the hum of voices all around you and the rumble of TOby’s snore. Your mouth tastes like the hot chocolate you drank after everyone collapsed, hot and sweaty and laughing, on the ground after the pillow fight. Assok’s fingers are just barely touching yours, fingertip to fingertip. The room is mostly dark, lit only by the crackling fire in the corner, casting soft golden light around the room.

At one point, while half-asleep, you feel somebody lift your head with the utmost tenderness, sliding a pillow underneath it and carefully letting you back down. You snuffle and mumble a _“th’nk y’”_ and hear a quiet chuckle in RGB’s deep voice.

You float in a pleasant, nebulous space between waking and sleeping, feel the shift of fabric as he pulls a fluffy blanket over you. It’s warm like it’s been sitting in front of the fire, and it smells like lavender fabric softener. You burrow into it and sigh.

RGB pauses—you feel him looming above you, he hasn’t left yet—then, with an exhalation of breath that brushes your cheek, not a sigh, but a release of something, he cups your cheek with a gloved hand and you feel his lips press firmly against your temple.

It’s not like the little there-and-gone brush of a kiss he gave you when you were all crying on the floor together; this one goes on for several seconds, and it’s much more definitive than that one had been. Like he’s staking a claim to you.

You don’t try to wake up to confront him about it; you strongly suspect that this is something that you aren’t meant to know about. Something that’s just for him. But it lifts more of that awful weight off your chest and makes you feel light and happy, because it’s definitive proof that he missed you, and that he wants you to stay here.

They all do. 

~ ~ ~

When you wake up the next morning, you’re on the couch instead of the floor, and your pillow—and your head on your pillow—are in RGB’s lap. He’s still sleeping, but one arm is tossed carelessly over the back of the couch, and the other is resting on your head. Your arm is dangling over the edge so you can still hold hands with Assok, something you’re sure RGB was responsible for. Your heart warms at this surprising display of thoughtfulness.

A few people are awake in the grey light of the morning, and they all have their phones out and are taking pictures, mostly of you and RGB. One of them is Dial. One of them is Tinker. This surprises you—you didn’t think he was the blackmailing type.

You open your eyes and wink at them, flashing a roguish grin. Dial has to hide his face in his freckled elbow to muffle the little explosions of laughter. Tinker smiles big and mouths, “peace sign” at you. You stick your tongue out of the side of your mouth and throw up a peace sign with your free hand.

And then RGB wakes up.

~ ~ ~

(After all the yelling and blustering is over, Tinker sends you the pictures. You print them out and frame the one with you making a ridiculous peace sign, RGB’s hand resting gently on your head.)

**Author's Note:**

> yaaaay huuuugs
> 
> also yes! hero is a nonbinary girl, which they will figure out in a later fic, so feel free to refer to them with she/her or they/them pronouns!
> 
> let me know what you think in the comments, and any suggestions or advice is always appreciated! i run on validation yo


End file.
